From USA Today:

Retirement programs for former federal workers — civilian and military — are growing so fast they now face a multitrillion-dollar shortfall nearly as big as Social Security’s, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The federal government hasn’t set aside money or created a revenue source similar to Social Security’s payroll tax to help pay for the benefits, so the retirement costs must be paid every year through taxes and borrowing.

The government paid a record $268 billion in pension and health benefits last year to 10 million former civil servants, military personnel and their dependents, about $100 billion more than was paid a decade earlier after adjusting for inflation. And $7 billion more was deposited into tax-deferred accounts of current workers.

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From National Journal:

The cost of official time used by federal employees participating in union activities increased nearly 7 percent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2009, according to a new report from the Office of Personnel Management.

The report, the subject of a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill, found that federal employees spent nearly 3 million hours of official time on union activities in 2009 at a cost of $129 million to taxpayers, an increase of $8 million from fiscal 2008. The number of official time hours used per bargaining unit employee on union matters during fiscal 2009, however, decreased slightly from fiscal 2008. “Official time costs represented less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the civilian personnel budget for federal civil service bargaining unit employees,” Timothy Curry, deputy associate director of partnership and labor relations at OPM, testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and Labor Policy.

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Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Even using all the standard controls—including race and gender, full- or part-time work, firm size, marital status, region, residence in a city or suburb, and more—the federal wage premium does not disappear. It stubbornly hovers around 12%, meaning private employees must work 13½ months to earn what comparable federal workers make in 12.

Most academic studies dating back to the 1970s have found similar pay differences. In addition to the wage premium, federal workers enjoy more generous fringe benefits than do private workers. For instance, federal workers receive a defined benefit pension with benefit levels comparable to those from private 401(k) plans, except that federal workers contribute only 0.8% of pay and are not subject to any market risk. They also receive employer matches to the defined contribution Thrift Savings Plan that significantly exceed the typical private employer match.

If the overall generosity of federal benefits matches that of federal salaries (which seems quite likely), total compensation for federal workers may easily exceed $14,000 per year more than an otherwise similar private employee.

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That’s because when the entire country is hurting and the private sector continues to lose jobs, bureaucrats are being hired.

The following chart makes that case. Since the beginning of the recession (roughly January 2008), some 7.9 million jobs were lost in the private sector while 590,000 jobs were gained in the public one.  And since the passage of the stimulus bill (February 2009), over 2.6 million private jobs were lost, but the government workforce grew by 400,000.

Plus, as you know, according to the latest numbers from Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average federal civilian worker now earns double what private-sector workers earn when factoring in wages and benefits ($119,982 vs. $59,909). And the gap is increasing.  According to Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute, in 2000, the average federal worker earned 66 percent more in total compensation than the average private-sector worker. By 2008, that ratio had risen to 100 percent. That’s serious money.

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Nearly one in five federal employees paid $100,000 a year or more, and that doesn’t count overtime pay or bonuses

Congress to increase the federal debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion before year’s end

Minneapolis puppet show receives federal stimulus dollars

Columbus City Schools have more than 120 buildings, but the district is renting banquet halls, high-end hotels and conference centers with $145,000 in federal grant dollars intended help low-income students

Washington, DC receiving nearly 10 times as much federal stimulus funds per capita as the rest of the nation

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